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Ricardo -> RE: Paco de Lucia mystery guitar? (May 4 2015 14:12:34)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: encanto
Jejejeje (this was a laugh in broken Spanish) I have no doubt Ruben D. knows all this and a whole bunch more -- this is why he's all over the Internet [:D] But the info was useful though - merci beaucoup! (Actually Ruben's alzapua exercises are not bad and I found them useful - that is, if you can actually take your eyes off the flying V headstock on his guitar).
Regarding sound - Sr. Martens - what I had in mind was that in the 2nd half of the 90s Paco appeared to be purposefully shooting for a super clean, crisp sound, which - IMHO - made some of his pieces sound more clinical than I would have liked if I was his mixing engineer. The tonal difference is quite stark compared to albums recorded around that time by other people playing Condes (e.g Tomatito - Rosas de Amor, Canizares - Noches de Iman y Luna), etc. This is of course my personal preference, but my take is that a flamenco guitar is a very rich instrument and it does not do it justice to discolor it as much, which is what the equipment Paco used at that time was doing. As you (correctly) indicate, this is more an issue of microphones and mixing/engineering than of guitar.
Can understand your opinon about change of sound...but this also corresponded to a change in direction musically. It is better to evaluate sound of guitars from live videos better because studio recordings can be a combination of different instruments and different time periods, and even different studios, pieced together over time (not recorded in one afternoon!) and made to sound "uniform" only by mastering process (brightness volume compression etc).
For the record, though he used the same conde negra LIVE since the time in question, he had been using other instruments in the studio since 1990....namely, Juan Montero Aguilera, Lester Devoe (seen and heard in Saura's "Flamenco" movie), Vicente Carillo, and god knows what else. He actually put time to list guitars on his last disc, yet it's virtually impossible to tell what was used where exactly.
Ricardo
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